July 19th, 2023
I don’t know how to adequately explain the immensity, the all-encompassing grip, the sustained continuity of grief. When someone has never experienced a loss of this magnitude, they cannot understand the way that it trips you up hundreds and hundreds of times every day…even after what seems like a very long time to everyone else.
The most seemingly ridiculous or innocuous things bring me to tears. I’m not sleeping well again, (see my last post) so I know that has something to do with why I cannot seem to keep the tears behind my eyelids lately…at least part of it. But despite valiant efforts to remain a statue of fortitude and strength, my efforts are struck down constantly by vague references that, for me, are enormous catapulted stones headed straight for my head.
This morning a friend who is a school teacher posted a meme that probably means something to school teachers but normally I would have just scrolled past. It said “Today is the 200th day of 2023.” That’s it. Just those words. (I’m guessing it’s a teacher thing because I know they usually make a big to-do about the 100th day of school. I don’t know; I may be wrong – but not the point…I digress.)
Immediately, I was devastated – no conscious thought over what this post “means” (pretty self-explanatory, right?) or pondering this 200th day’s relation to any other day of the year to understand why one would post it. The very first thing that popped into my head immediately was: “165 days left in the last year I saw him, the last year he was ever here.
You see, when you are grieving, nothing has to make sense. In fact, I feel that many, many things do not make sense in my life right now. I often think about situations like this one, or if you have read my post about my first trip to the grocery store after he died and the infamous pickle jar, and wonder why on earth that upset me so much. Some to the point of literal panic attack. These occurrences seem so insipid, so completely without meaning but, for me, the meaning feels like more than I can handle at that moment.
I was telling my daughter-in-love today that I have only watched television twice since my husband died. We weren’t huge TV watchers but there were a handful of shows that we followed and always watched together in the evenings when he was home. Even when he was away on contract work, sometimes on his day off or in the evening after he got home from work, we would FaceTime or use speakerphone while we each watched the show, trading typical banter that we would have if he’d been home. It was just one of our things. Now, a new season of a show just aired this past week that he and I had been waiting to be released. I can’t watch it. I can’t even bring myself to be interested in what had been happening in the previous season finale that made it seem as if it were taking forever for this next one to come out. It just doesn’t even matter.
One of the times I watched TV alone in the last couple of months was to watch the last two episodes of a series that I typically watched alone when he wasn’t home. That went okay except that, when he was home and I watched it, he’d have humorous input on what was going on. (I have a secret addiction to “Married at First Sight”: don’t tell anyone. I’ve seen every season.) He’d always say something like, “Is it just me or is she really being a drama queen?” Or “Oh, I know he didn’t just say that to her. She should just get out now.” I thought of him as I watched, but mostly with fond memories and kind of chuckling at who is is…who he was…
The second time that I watched TV, I thought, okay, I won’t watch anything I’ve ever seen with him. I’ll watch some random older movie and I should be fine. Except the movie had me full-on sobbing by the time it was over. Let’s just say that the description Netflix provided did not accurately provide enough context to what the movie entailed. (It was “The Choice”; and, in my defense, I did NOT see that it had been written by Nicholas Sparks before I watched it.) Alrighty then…no more TV for me. At least for awhile.
My overarching point here is that what makes me sad doesn’t (and doesn’t have to) make sense.
I’ve had several people telling me lately that going back to work should be good for me because “it will help you get your mind off of things.” Ladies and gentlemen: I completely understand where you’re coming from and why this won’t make sense to you. Before this tragedy in my own life, I feel sure I would have thought the same. But, nothing takes my mind off of things. Like, so far, nothing. He was so much a part of every part of my everyday life that every moment screams the regret of my loss. Am I capable of staying alive without him? I am, even though I admit to moments and sometimes days when I’d rather just not. But normally, in the way the world should be, he was part of everything I did. Hear something funny? Text him. See our granddaughter do something new? Sent him a pic. Question about pool chemicals? Him. Aggravated that they dog chewed something up? Him. Proud of something one of the boys did? Also him. Just having a random, hormonal, funky, sad, off day? Still him. I was able to retire because of him and going back to work just reminds me that he didn’t want me to and that I didn’t have to when he was here. And nothing else I have found so far ever “takes my mind off of it.” Two of my favorite things are having my kids over for Saturday lunch and cheering on Lillian, our granddaughter, when she does a new “trick” (she’s almost seven months old now so she learns new things practically every day now.) Although I’m glad that I have my children and Lillian to count on to do everything they can to cheer me up, neither of those things have brought the same joy since he’s been gone. Kelly Clarkson sings a song that says “Since you’ve been gone, I can breathe for the first time…” Since he’s been gone, it feels as if I can’t. All the time. It’s been two and a half months and it still feels like I have to work to breathe. In…out…in…out…like a respiratory metronome. His absence is as all-encompassing as his presence always was for me. I could have breathed him all day long, every day. Jordin Sparks sings a song that says “Tell me how I’m s‘posed to breathe with no air, can’t live, can’t breathe with no air…” Yes, this one fits; if it’s hard for you to imagine, just YouTube this one:
Tell me how I’m s’posed to breathe with no air…
If I should die before I wake
It’s ‘cause you took my breath away.
Losing you is like livin’ in a world with no air.
I’m here alone, didn’t wanna leave
My heart won’t move it’s incomplete
Wish there was a way I could make you understand.
But how do you expect me
To live alone with just me?
‘Cause my world revolves around you
It’s so hard for me to breathe.
I walked, I ran, I jumped, I flew,
Right off the ground to float to you.
There’s no gravity to hold me down for real.
But somehow I’m still alive inside
You took my breath but I survived.
I don’t know how; I don’t even care.
Tell me how I’m s’posed to breathe with no air?
Can’t live can’t breathe with no air.
That’s how I feel whenever you’re not there.
There’s no air, no air.
Got me out here in the water so deep
Tell me how you’re gon’ be without me?
If you ain’t here, I just can’t breathe….
God is in the Outcome 